In "Homer's Enemy" Frank Grimes is appalled that Homer is lazy but yet successful and starts to hate Homer, yet what he doesn't realize is that you don't have to work hard to be a good and successful person, you just have to have a big heart and be surrounded by the people you love and good friends.
Here's another curiosity: many tend to believe that Frank Grimes was the Only Sane Man and Homer got everything in life with ease, right? But wait, if we mean a point of view, Homer and Frank are Not So Different: Homer is often a jerk, but also had a tough childhood, his mother was absent most of his life, his father an alcoholic and verbally abusive; And Frank often acted as an intolerant and short-tempered jerk to Homer, but also had a tough childhood. It may sound strange, but both are very similar, the only difference is that they only have different lifestyles and different personalities.
No wonder they didn't get along.
In the first 20 seasons bully Jimbo Jones had a full head of hair, shown in some episodes such as Bart of Darkness, Poppa's Got A Brand New Badge and Lisa the Drama Queen. In several recent episodes such as Moms I'd Like To Forget, The Great Simpsinaand Beware My Cheating Bart'', he's bald on top when he takes his hat off. Either he's been bald this whole time or wearing a wool cap for 20 years pretty much caused it.
In the Thanksgiving episode from the second season Homer mixes up Patty and Selma's names. This isn't Early Installment Weirdness, it's Homer resenting the two and not caring about their names.
Kind of an obvious one, but still pretty notable: In "And Maggie Makes Three", Homer believes his life is finally on track. He has two children, a loving wife, and a great job at the local bowling alley. Unfortunately for him, he has no idea Marge is pregnant with Maggie. When Homer prays to God, he asks for everything to freeze as it currently is. Considering Maggie already existed at the time, and no pregnancies have happened since then, is it possible his prayers were answered?
In The Simpsons Movie, when the titular family is walking into church and Homer is venting his usual complaints, one of the things he says is "Oh, Marge, please, it's not like these people have better things to do with their lives than praying to their phony-baloney God." At first, it might seem like a standard jab at the usual acceptable target, but, in "HOMR", when he was smart, he accidentally proved that God doesn't exist while coming up with a flat-rate tax proposal. So, despite going back to being dumb, that's probably the one thing he still remembers (even though Homer actually met God on the episode where he stops going to church and God agrees with Homer about his problems with religion, so how does one explain that?).
We used to think Flanders was Homer's age until he revealed he 60 in a season 10 episode ("Viva Ned Flanders"). A couple classic era episodes show that he grew up in the 50s with beatnik parents. It's the 2010s now so that makes this instance of Comic Book Time more believable and Hilarious in Hindsight. This also throws some Negative Continuity and Series Continuity Error out the window.
In 'Half-Decent Proposal' Artie Ziff pays many Springfieldianites money to relive his high-school prom. Among the attendees are Kirk and Luann Van Houten - together. At first it seems illogical considering their divorce, until one remembers they are being paid to relive the past.
In Krusty Gets Busted from the first season, Kent Brockman plays a clip of Krusty's on the air heart attack, where he's cooking ham and bacon on a grill. A couple seasons later we learn Krusty is Jewish. God obviously exists in the show's universe (despite that Homer — during his brief time of being intelligent — accidentally came up with an airtight theory that God doesn't exist), and he was punishing Krusty for eating treif (non-kosher) foods.
More Fridge Brilliance: In addition to being an entertainer, Rabbi Krustofski probably resented Krusty even moreso for endorsing pork products.
Also why does God seem to exist, despite Homer "proving" he doesn't? Smart Homer's IQ may have gone up 50 points, but that's still only an average 104 IQ.
Mr. Burns used to forgot Homer's name in the early seasons and he finally got it in the Who Shot Mr. Burns episodes. Homer was a suspect in the shooting. Since then because of these circumstances and how crazy the situation was, Mr. Burns knows Homer's name no problem.
Nelson's talked about huckleberry picking in a couple of later episodes. When the boys were in Branson, Missouri in season seven Nelson wanted to see Andy Williams and was excited to hear Moon River. This song contains a line involving two friends picking huckleberries in their youth. Probably unintended on the writer's part and was supposed to be an Out of Character moment, but the whole thing is made funnier and explains why Nelson likes the song so much.
Many people say that Homer has become dumber and dumber over the years. A slow descent at first, but eventually reaching the point where the only rule was 'Homer cannot forget his own name.' The brilliance is that in season 4 Homer received a coronary bypass graft. 51% of patients who have a bypass graft suffer severe brain damage as the years pass. The cure we all saw him get... is the cure that made him so very, very dumb.
Later that season he ends up in a coma (on the very first Clip Show episode "So It's Come To This: A Simpsons Clip Show") and is even told he suffered some brain damage.
However, he still becomes smarter when a crayon is removed from his brain in HOMR.
In another Simpsons episode, "Treehouse of Horror XIII", in the second part, one of the zombies is the "most evil German": Kaiser Wilhelm. The joke is, of course, they don't say Hitler. Why? Because Hitler was actually Austrian (even though German is the official language of Austria as well as Germany and some parts of Switzerland, which makes the line from "Cape Feare" "No one who speaks German could be an evil man," funnier when you think about it).
That and Hitler's shown to be alive (in the Simpson world) in the episode where Bart calls Australia and the beginning of the episode where Bart and his friends become a boy band (it was the part where Homer is watching a "Great Moments in Olympic History" documentary and when it cut to Bob Beaman's long-jump at the 1968 Olympics, it showed an elderly Hitler in the audience).
The episode "The Great Wife Hope" features yet another attempt by Marge to stop everyone's fun. Nelson inadvertently gives her great advice on how to get together other pissy moms, clergymen, etc. He claims this is because he secretly enjoys event planning, but the real more subtle joke is that what Marge wants to do is essentially bullying.
In the episode where Homer is escaping the plant and he's attacked by a Giant Spider, he's told that the spider will be defeated if he says a Bible verse. Of course, he can't remember any (despite that he should have remembered some from either the season 2 episode where Homer steals cable and Lisa worries for her father's soul or the season four episode where Homer decides to make skipping church on Sunday a religion), so he simply kills the spider by throwing a rock at it. The Fridge Brilliance comes in when you realize that Homer just killed a gigantic enemy by throwing a small rock and hitting it between the eyes.
Early in The Simpsons, Lenny is seen living in a furniture-less, run down house, however later on, he's shown to have a very expensive and clean home with art pieces everywhere, there doesn't seem to be a reason for the change, until you remember that Mr. Burns bought the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant from him when he was briefly put in charge...
Alternate interpretation: Remember "Marge on the Lam" when Lenny was seen shaving the legs of some woman who told him to "shave up, not down, you idiot!"? That could have been his wife, and the furniture-less, run-down house he lived in in "Realty Bites" (season nine) was the result of a divorce that may have happened off-screen, in which the woman he shaved her legs for took everything he had. Lenny living in a nice apartment on "Homer Simpson, This Is Your Wife" (which came on during the 17th) could have been the end result of Lenny regaining the money he lost in the divorce.
In a Christmas episode about the Nativity, Jesus is potrayed by Bart. It may seem offensive at first, but think about it: Jesus was seen as a trouble maker by the Pharisees and the Romans, and they thought that his messages might start riots.
In Simpsons Bible Stories, when Lisa/Israelite tells Millhouse/Moses to tell Pharaoh to let his people go, Millhouse/Moses says "Oh, so now they're my people." There is a theory, albeit a minor one, that Moses was actually ethnically Egyptian.
In "Wild Barts Can't Be Broken", Homer and his friends wreck up the school on a joyride and the damages are blamed on rowdy kids, thus causing a curfew to be placed. This was all gone in the next episode. This may have been Negative Continuity, but the 500th episode (At Long Last Leave) had Mayor Quimby illustrate Springfield's hatred of the whole family by showing a photo of Homer wrecking the school. So they must have found out the real cause and lifted the curfew, although these episodes were about 13 years apart. But where were Lenny, Carl (and Barney) if they weren't seen in that photo?
Almost Fridge Brilliance: The backstory to Skinner/Tamzarian in "The Principle and the Pauper" is almost completely consistent with his background in "The Simpsons Spinoff Showcase", except for the switch of his home city, New Orleans vs. Capital City. And they can't be one and the same, since New Orleans is not the capital of any state (New Orleans is one of Louisiana's most popular cities, but it's not the capital city. Louisiana's capital is Baton Rouge).
When Bart is asked to name the pirate on Treasure Island one of the answers that pop in his head is Long John Silver which is actually correct plus that imagination that he had where he was held back in the fourth grade where his son told him that the name of the pirate is Long John Silver. So Bart has actually read the book, he just doesn't remember the name!
In "The Front" there is an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon where Itchy removes Scratchy's fur and he steals his fur back, where after he's beaten by anti-fur protesters (despite it being his own fur). At first I thought it was an in-universe Take That, but know I know Lisaco-wrote it(with Bart).
Maybe if one watched the later episodes (in which Lisa has become an animal-loving Soapbox Sadie) followed by the early ones (in which Lisa did speak out against society's ills, but, was, at her core, an eight-year-old girl who liked Malibu Stacy dolls and cartoons). It wouldn't make sense if it was the other way around.
Fans of the show often remark on the disturbing similarity of Milhouse's parents — in one late-season episode, Milhouse himself speculates that they are brother and sister. However, the episode "Lemon of Troy" shows that major characters in Springfield have doppelgangers in Shelbyville, sometimes (as in the case of Groundskeeper Willy) of the opposite gender. In the same episode, Luanne mentions that she was born in Shelbyville. Clearly Kirk married his Shelbyville counterpart!
Bart's line in one episode about not wearing a blue shirt becomes a lot funnier if you know that a lot of Simpsons merchandise from the early 1990s has Bart inexplicably wearing a blue shirt.
At the end of the Treehouse of Horror story "Desperately Xeeking Xena" Lucy Lawless flies Bart and Lisa to safety. When they say "Xena can't fly" she responds "I'm Lucy Lawless." Earlier in the segment Lucy tells her fans anytime there's a continuity error or something doesn't make sense, A Wizard Did It. This could be seen as why she flies away.
No, it's because she's Lawless, so she doesn't obey the laws of physics.
I think it's more that The Simpsons frequently like to portray minor celebrities as super-human, like Bette Midler and Johnny Carson in "Krusty Gets Kancelled" being as fast a car and having super strength, respectively. The joke was that Xena has superpowers, but flying isn't one of them, however the actress who plays her can fly.
In the "Seven Beer Snitch" Snowball II is seen sneaking off to a different family who feeds her and they call her Smokey. This is Snowball V, not Snowball II who was killed in the previous season. Snowball V/Smokey was more than likely the other family's pet but wandered off, thus making her double life more believable.
She was the crazy cat lady cat first.
It's possible that cat was with the other family before the Crazy Cat Lady got ahold of her.
In Treehouse of Horror XVII, Dolph the bully knows what the Golem is before it attacks him because it's been established in a few latter-day episodes that Dolph is Jewish (he goes to Hebrew school and had his bar mitzvah).
In "The Way We Was," Homer joins the debate team. Shortly thereafter, he gives a seemingly ridiculous argument against lowering the speed limit, claiming that millions of people being late justifies the deaths of a few people. Although the point goes unexplained beyond typical Homer babble (and ends with Homer mooning his opponent), there are at least two schools of thought that give serious credence to his claim: utilitarianism (specifically Bentham "pleasure-over-pain" utilitarianism) and economic efficiency. Either of these arguments would hold up in a round of Lincoln-Douglas debate. (This could also be Straw Man Hasa Point or Genius Bonus instead of Fridge Brilliance, but it's the sort of thing you don't notice until many years after watching it for the first time.)
In "Holidays of Future Passed," Milhouse and Lisa have a daughter Zia together. Milhouse says that they used the best genetic material when she was born, which meant none of his. This could explain why Zia uses her mother's last name instead of her father's.
It is technically possible to set a watch to the length of Johnny Unitas' hair ("Mother Simpson"), but one would have to measure it very accurately.
In the sixth episode of The Simpsons' fourth season Homer forbids Bart from watching the Itchy and Scratchy Movie so that he can learn discipline and grow up to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. At the end of the episode we see a Flash Forward to a grown Bart walking with an elderly Homer having achieved this goal. Two years later in the 19th episode of The Simpsons' sixth season we see another flash forward episode where Lisa is in college and about to get married. Bart is shown holding a job demolishing buildings, but mentions that once he works the rage out of his system he will attend law school. Finally in the 17th episode of the eleventh season we go Bart to the Future to where Lisa has become President of the United States and Bart helps get her out of a major debt crisis. The two future episodes actually confirm the coda flash forward way back in season four as Bart goes to law school and is ultimately appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by Lisa as thanks for his assistance.
In "Bart's Comet" after Homer makes Flanders leave the fallout shelter, everyone carries on casually. Homer eventually comes to his senses and says he's disgusting in everyone, especially Rodd and Todd. It may sound like Homer ripping on the Flanders', but Homer was really disgusted that when Flanders told Todd to shoot daddy if he tried to return, he agreed. It shows that while jealous and he can be a jerk towards Flanders, Homer doesn't want Flanders to be harmed.
In "Springfield Up" citizens of Springfield are being interviewed about Homer and Ralph says "he may not be perfect, but he's my dad!" It seems like typical Ralph stupidity but Word Of God states that Ralph was envisioned as a mini Homer, thus adding a new layer to the joke.
Word Of God stated that Bart picked up his catchphrases like "Eat my shorts" and "Don't have a cow man" from TV and other places. In the season five episode "Bart Gets Famous," Bart becomes well known for saying "I didn't do it." Krusty used this phrase in season one's "Krusty's Get Busted" and Bart may have just remembered it and used it himself.
What could possibly be the best Stealth Pun ever comes from "Make Room for Lisa":
"I'm so sick of people hiding behind the Bill of Rights!"
The security guards were about to brutalize Homer. Even if Homer wasn't holding the physical copy of the manuscript, the Bill of Rights does guarantee that the guards can't brutalize him (though they were about to when Homer licked off the Eighth Amendment [the one that forbids cruel and unusual punishment]).
In "Fear of Flying" as a prank Lenny puts a snake in the cash register at Moe, which pops out and bites him. Moe shows no ill effects after being bitten. In two unrelated episodes, "Homer the Heretic" and "Eeny Teeny Maya Moe" it's established Moe's a snake handler, thus it doesn't bother him.
In "Homer the Great" Homer has a revenge list, which includes the Bill of Rights. Homer would get his wish four seasons later in "Make Room for Lisa" when he accidentally destroys it at the Smithsonian exhibit.
In early episodes such as "Krusty Gets Busted" and "Krusty Gets Canceled" Krusty lives in an apartment, but in "Bart the Fink" he lives in a mansion. In "A Star Is Burns" Krusty is on the film festival jury, and mentions the film moved him...to a bigger house. Mr. Burns' bribing him into voting "Burns for All Seasons" as the best movie is the reason he no longer lives in an apartment.
The episode "Homer's Barbershop Quartet" is a parody of The Beatles, and includes many tributes. A subtle joke is the rodent invasion of the 60s, referring to the British Invasion which the Fab Four were part, with the Alvin and the Chipmunks parody Melvin and the Squirrels.
In "Homer at the Bat" Mr. Burns laughs maniacally at the idea of "nine misfortunes" to his all-star softball ringers, as there's only an "outside chance" of seven misfortunes. And he's right: there are only seven misfortunes. Obviously nothing happens to Daryl Strawberry and he plays the game as expected. But nothing happens to Don Mattingly either; he turns up to the game but is sent away by Mr. Burns solely due to the latter's misunderstanding of what sideburns are.
Bart was right when he said "Lisa's got a boyfriend, that she'll never see again" in The Simpsons Movie. Other than the altered opening sequence in the 19th season premiere, Colin is never seen again onscreen after The Movie.
"The Mook, the Chef, the Wife and Her Homer" confirms that Fat Tony is, in fact, a widower. By "The Real Housewives of Fat Tony", however, Selma (his current wife) discovers Tony is actually still married to someone else she didn't know about. Remembering the former episode, you might think Tony probably just remarried after his wife's death. But now take into consideration the "real" Fat Tony had been killed in "Donnie Fatso", and the Fat Tony we currently know is just 'Fit Tony', his overweight cousin. Does that never-before-mentioned marriage make more sense?
In "Moonshine River" Bart visits old girlfriends who he burned his bridges with, just to get rejected again. He visits Gina, the girl he knew from juvenile hall just to get punched in the face. She's not punching him in the face because they had a falling out, she's mad because it's the first time in nine seasons he paid her a visit.
In a lot of episodes when Duffman isn't performing he's called different names like Larry or Sid. It's later established that different actors play Duffman, so it's not the same guy we see each time.
It's been established that Waylon Smithers is gay. Before he learned how his father really died, Mr. Burns told him his dad was killed by a pack of Amazonian women. This could be a Freudian Excuse on why he doesn't like women.
In a couple episodes Itchy and Scratchy are seen on "Springfield Squares" and a Channel 6 ad with other In-Universe celebrities like they're actual living creatures. In Real Life animated characters are added into TV shows like Brian and Stewie at the Emmy's, so this was the case as well.
In the episode "Lard of the Dance" Alex Whitney, voiced by Lisa Kudrow is a second grader who acts like a mini adult. Usually when guest stars voice kids, their voice sounds more childlike but Alex doesn't. Since she's trying to act like an adult it makes sense why she sounds older.
Homer being Acrofatic in episodes like "Whacking Day" and "Sex, Pies, and Idiot Scrapes" makes more sense when you remember a flashback to high school when he did gymnastics.
Invoked by Bart, Lisa, and Homer in the episode "The Color Yellow." When they find out they had a black ancestor we get these realizations:
Bart: So that's why I'm so cool.
Lisa: And that's my jazz is so smooth.
Homer: And that's why I earn less than my white coworkers!
In "Saturdays of Thunder" Patty and Selma get their hair done, and Patty gets her hair dyed brown and Selma gets her hair dyed blonde. In "The Blue and the Grey" it turns out those are their natural hair colors, but they appear grey because of all the smoke and ash from their cigarettes. They simply had their hair washed before it was styled.
Ever notice how around the time they get divorced, Milhouse's father Kirk is a broke deadbeat? In "Radioactive Man" as soon as they find out Milhouse is a star they buy a lot of things they can't afford like a jacuzzi suit and a big screen TV, and since the movie failed they couldn't afford any of the stuff.
In "Bart Sells His Soul" he says the soul is something made up to scare kids like the Boogie Man or Michael Jackson. There was an entire episode devoted to Michael Jackson but since it was an impostor, Bart must think he's not real after all.
In Treehouse of Horror VI Homer complains about "lousy Smarch weather" in relation to a joke about both the misprinted calenders and Marge's narration about it being the 13th hour of the 13th day of the 13th month. The lousy weather is shown to be wind driven snow which would be correct as the 13th month would be the following year's January on a correctly printed calender.
The Simpsons's house is stated to be worth only $1000 in a recent episode. Keep in mind the house was rebuilt at the end of The Simpsons Movie, and in the season 19 premiere there was a sign that said "Burns Construction: Building Cheaply and Charging Dearly."
Recently Barney Gumble has been an off again on again alcoholic. In The Simpsons Movie he is seen drunk a few times early on before the dome is placed over the town. When the dome is put over the town, the alcoholics at Moe's run to the church and the church goers flock to Moe's. Later in the movie Barney is seen at AA. Because he thought the end was coming, Barney probably temporarily tried to change his ways.
When we first saw Skinner's mother in the first season, she was a nice old lady and seemed to be proud of Seymour when he gave her a tour of the school. She was on the toilet when Bart flushed the cherry bomb and has been depicted as a cranky old lady since. This is a justified Characterization Marches On since the incident scarred her for life.
There's another flashfoward in an early episode that may be canon, and is supported by a gag in a future episode. At the end of "Rosebud" we see a cyborg Mr. Burns looking for his teddy bear Bobo in a futuristic world taken over by apes. In the episode "Future-Drama" there's a billboard that says give apes the vote. While "Future-Drama" is a what if scenario, "Holidays of Future Passed" seems to be canon and has elements of Future-Drama such as Bart's ex wife is his girlfriend Jenda. Going by this theory, apes were given rights and took over sometime down the road.
In "Lisa the Drama Queen" at the end Homer is inspired to write a novel and pictures the family in his own personal fantasy. He imagines Bart as a hot dog, Lisa as a starfish, Maggie as a monster truck, and Marge as a beer. In "New Kids on the Block" Homer compared women to beer when discussing sex with Bart, hence why he pictures her as one.
In "I Married Marge" when Marge goes to get an ultrasound to see if she's pregnant, Lisa wants to name the potential little brother or sister Ariel. A few seasons later in "Make Room For Lisa" it turns out Lisa's favorite movie is The Little Mermaid.
Homer wishes to live under the sea in "Homer Badman." His wish came true in "Future-Drama" in a what if scenario of the future where he has an underwater house.
In the Itchy and Scratchy cartoons, Scratchy dies horrible deaths because he's a black cat, which are signs of bad luck.
In the Season 13 episode "Gump Roast" the show's producers apologize for a Clip Show by musically assuring the viewer that they still have "stories for years". These stories include Moee getting a cell phone, Marge becoming a robot, Bart owning a bear and a Crazy wedding where "something" happens*
da-do-do-do-do
. Over the next decade we actually do see Marge becoming a robot (in a daydream sequence), Moe does get a cell phone (and asks why people seem to care) and Patty has a wedding ceremony with another woman where something happens in that the woman is actually a man. While Bart has still never owned a bear, it is actually brilliant because by holding that back the show's producers indicate they have still not used up all their ideas.
Ralph Wiggum is in Lisa's class, but appears in Bart's class in a few episodes. This could be a goof, but since Ralph is Too Dumb to Live it's not farfetched he would appear in the wrong class from time to time.
In the end of "Boy Scoutz N Da Hood", the rest of the campers are seen being attacked by an unknown monster. None of them are ever seen again, ever.
Not just any monster. Judging by the music, it is implied they were attacked by Jason
So yeah, they probably died.
Selma mentions earlier in the episode that "it's cougar season", so they could have been mauled by a cougar, but yeah, they're all dead. It gets worse when you realize Ernest Borgnine (the celebrity dad hired to replace Warren's dad, who was put in prison) was one of the victims (granted, he didn't die this way in 2012, but the fact that they played his death for laughs isn't much to laugh at these days).
We find out in "The Fool Monty" that the thing that keeps Mr Burns alive is bile and hate. That's right, not only is Mr Burnsimmortal, but in order to do so he has to be a heartless millionaire. We've seen the damage to Springfield and the world that Burns has caused. Unless someone can bankrupt/kill him (which probablywon't work), Springfield is going to have to put up with him Forever., making Mr. Burns' genuinelynicemoments utterly meaningless.
Homer has attempted suicide multiple times (when he couldn't find a job, when he tried to stop Bart from jumping Springfield Gorge, when he couldn't grow crops on his father's farm, when his fifteen minutes of fame over bowling a perfect game were up — to name a few, and that's not counting the foolish things he does that would get a real person killed or injured, like boxing a professional heavyweight, eating an extremely rotten hoagie, drinking dishwashing liquid, driving his bartender buddy's car off a cliff, getting electrocuted [several times by everything from lightning to dangerous toys], getting a flower shot in his head, or trying to escape a riptide while teaching his baby daughter how to swim). In "Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind," he predicts that he will do so again after losing his memory, and knows exactly how, when, and where he is likely to do so. He has been thinking about it a lot. Maybe all of his innocent buffoonery (and alcoholism) is actually an expression of deep-seated self-destructive tendencies.
In "Three Gays of the Condo", Moe force-feeds beer to Homer when the latter comes "dangerously" close to realizing that alcohol is actually a problem. Combine that with Moe's encouragement of Homer to become the "new Barney", and his feeding of Barney's new coffee addiction, both in "Days of Wine and D'ohses", and throw in his robbing of Homer in "The Parent Rap" ("Yeah, I rob now."), and Moe looks like an Aggressive Drug Dealer willing to do anything to keep his patrons addicted and paying him.
One of the most beloved and longest running gags on the series is Homer strangling his ten year old son. Think about that for a second.
Though a lot of later episodes do mention how brutal and abusive that is, such as "Love Is A Many Strangled Thing" and "Behind the Laughter."
Yes, it is Lampshaded, but not deconstructed or justified. And a few episodes after that, it's back to being Played for Laughs again.
The drastic Flanderization of Ned Flanders? It all came after Maude's death. Or when Flanders went insane after yelling at everyone who tried and failed to fix his house (as seen in "Hurricane Neddy"), though that could have been the Start of Darkness and Maude's death was the last straw.
Hurricane Neddy showed that Ned has been repressing anger for decades, leading him to release it after the destruction of his house. Given how utterly devastated he must have been by Maude's death, he's probably venting his frustration through religion, and at the same time tries to be as non-aggressive as possible due to his high moral standards. Poor guy probably thinks he'll be damned if he acts out in genuine rage.
Also part of Ned's anger is that his Leftorium store had been looted for no good reason, and it's afterwards that they try to make up for that, and even that's horribly done. No wonder Ned snapped.
Also Fridge Horror the third future episode-one of other visions Professor Frink has, "Ned's Revenge", has Future Ned impaling Homer. Maude's death and having to deal with years of penting up his anger must've made him want to pay Homer back for causing Maude's death.
Homer has been getting dumber as time passes. However, given the head injuries he's suffered, his increasing stupidity may not be a result of flanderization but rather severe brain trauma caused by many unfortunate injuries. Any flashback of Homer being stupid long before these may be a result said injuries turning him into an Unreliable Narrator. Made worse by the fact that the first major injury Homer suffered was in Season 2, which happened due to trying to stop Bart from attempting to jump over the Springfield-Homer's Hair-Trigger Temper towards Bart may be somewhat justified.
He does say that he had brain damage after being in a coma in the clip show, so this could be the case.
The fact that Luigi Risotto doesn't have any (canon) appearances after 'Million Dollar Abie' May raise... Implications. Specifically, that Lisa is technically a murderer.
He appears in "The Real Housewives of Fat Tony in season 22 in the truffles subplot.
In the flash forward future episodes, we see that Moe and Lenny and Carl are still alive. With the exception of Lisa's Wedding (where he appears in the audience) we never see Barney Gumble. This could mean he died from years of alcoholism.
It took me a while to realize why The Simpsons Hit & Run has that name. Then, while sitting around doing something completely unrelated to The Simpsons, I realized the reason. It's a Grand Theft Auto clone, so they named it after a different vehicular crime.
